Slashdot Mirror

Just basing figures like these on whatever market gives you the best results is more to keep shareholders happy.
I agree with you on the survey being meaningless. But AMD is keeping their shareholders happy. You need to chech the 3rd quarter profits
To Quote "For the quarter ended Sept. 25, sales of chips that power servers, desktop computers, and laptops leaped 44% to $969 million. The division posted operating profit of $209 million, up from $89 million a year ago. "

I agree that this survey do not give the whole picture. AMD is growing you all got to see their third quarter profit

For a company that was trading at around USD60.00 per share five years ago - and now under USD4.00 per share - many stock boffins would argue that Sun is an IT&T relic in its own right (refer stock history graph).

OzDJ
Moblog

RTFP, I was talking about 6 years ago. Here's a chart: http://quicktake.morningstar.com/Stock/Valuation10 .asp?Country=USA&Symbol=MSFT&stocktab=valuation You can see that I may have exaggerated, but you'll see a P/E of ~65 for 1999. Quite a different story than the current ~25. And a P/E of 50? you don't "normally" look for a general P/E ratio. Different industries have different ratios based on expectations of growth. Again, if you'd RTFP, I was talking about the fact that MS is a very mature company and not likely to have a much higher P/E than say an Altria or a GM.

One might call the dropping of the price of MS's stock from above $120 to $20 within weeks of the judgment a negative result.

And when would this dramatic stock price drop have happened? The data I can find doesn't show this at all. Stock price history. Be sure to consider the effect of stock splits too.

You get to the root of this whole thread with this statement.

Sam Walton died on 04/05/1992. In the 70's and 80's, while Sam was still alive and not letting the company engage in these practices, Wal-Mart stock was increasing at an annual average of about 35%. Since he died and the company started buying from child labor manufacturers, the stock has evened out and even gone down.

From this article
"In the 1970s and 1980s, Wal-Mart was the quintessential growth stock. It was profitable, with returns on equity consistently above 20%. Year after year, its revenue and earnings grew by more than 25%, often by more than 30%, as it opened new stores all over the country. As a result of this consistent growth, the annualized return of Wal-Mart's stock from 1970 to 1990 was about 35%. That's an impressive figure, but most of this return came from solid growth in revenue and earnings; Wal-Mart's valuations increased only modestly during this time.

In the early 1990s, this growth began to slow as the retailing giant started running out of places to expand in the United States. The number of new Wal-Mart stores barely inched up in 1994, after routinely increasing by 10% annually, and the following year the company's revenue growth dropped to less than 20% for the first time ever. Suddenly, it began to look as though Wal-Mart had saturated the market, and its days as a growth juggernaut seemed to be over. The company's earnings continued to grow, albeit at a more modest rate of 10% to 15% annually, but its valuation eroded at about the same rate as the market lost confidence in Wal-Mart's future. As a result, its formerly robust stock stayed flat and actually lost a little ground between late 1991 and late 1996."

After that, their stock did again go up, but this was due to vapour (ever-increasing P/E ratio; stock price based on expectations).

To me, this means that a company can be ethical and profitable at the same time. Therefore, I refuse to invest in, and refuse to patronize any company which operates in a clearly unethical manner.

http://quote.morningstar.com/Quote.html?ticker=AMD

And by double what Intel has when I checked. Intel is dirty, as dirty as Microsoft, they have just been smarter about it is all. We'll see where this goes or doesn't but the ruling in Japan and the Europeans looking into this doesn't bode well for Intel IMO.

and yet, Intel's stock is rising. Who's to say this won't benefit both sides?

Just look at their three year stock price: http://quote.morningstar.com/Quote.html?Ticker=SCO X&TimeFrame=Y3#PriceGraph

No investor in their right mind would touch this company.

Just look at their three year stock price: http://quote.morningstar.com/Quote.html?Ticker=SCO X&TimeFrame=Y3#PriceGraph

The hump in the middle is pretty much indicative of speculative traders reckoning that SCO may have had an outside shot in winning the lawsuit vs. IBM. Of course, since that stock price has come back down to earth it shows that those traders have actually gained a little bit of common sense. Although in reality, $4.10 is way overpriced for this company, considering they turned a profit in exactly one out of six years since being traded publicly: http://quicktake.morningstar.com/Stock/Income10.as p?Country=USA&Symbol=SCOX&stocktab=finance

No investor in their right mind would touch this company.

Just look at their three year stock price: http://quote.morningstar.com/Quote.html?Ticker=SCO X&TimeFrame=Y3#PriceGraph

The hump in the middle is pretty much indicative of speculative traders reckoning that SCO may have had an outside shot in winning the lawsuit vs. IBM. Of course, since that stock price has come back down to earth it shows that those traders have actually gained a little bit of common sense. Although in reality, $4.10 is way overpriced for this company, considering they turned a profit in exactly one out of six years since being traded publicly: http://quicktake.morningstar.com/Stock/Income10.as p?Country=USA&Symbol=SCOX&stocktab=finance

No investor in their right mind would touch this company.

http://news.morningstar.com/news/BW/M10/D25/200410 25005359.html "TransFlash continues to generate interest among other mobile phone makers as well, said Sabio. SanDisk expects approximately 40 handset models from several manufacturers to include TransFlash support in 2005." The link above also has some details such as the exact size ... but yeah, pinky nail size is a pretty good size comparison. I don't know if the parent has ever actually used a device with Transflash regularly but they really aren't that difficult to handle and really aren't a proprietary format. As far as I know all retail transflash cards come with a SD adapter, and I do happen to know for sure that the card is the exact same as a SD card except that the pins are in a slightly different order and it's a different package. (I made an adapter to allow my v710 to read from a 1gig transflash simply by soldering a SD card to the pins of a hollow TF body) The parent however is correct that I hardly take mine out. I do so maybe only once every few weeks to throw an episode of sealab and some fresh mp3s on there. Its not one of those things you carry around with you (although it does have a nice little carrier that holds a TF card and the SD adapter (you can even carry around a second TF in the adapter). How many people here would pay a one time fee of $25 to give their phone the ability to get free ring tones, watch full length movies and episodes of your favourite shows, mp3s, freely move pictures from a pc. (or $45 for 256mb) What it comes down to is the functionality it adds to devices is more than worth what it costs (around $10 more than a same size SD from sandisk) AND, offers all the same features of a SD card ... plus making your phone kick ass I mean come on.

- John Thompson (Symantec CEO) sits in his office writing worm variants A through Z.

- Poses as 14yr old l33t hax0r in chatroom. Shares worm source with some kid with axe to grind against world.

- Kid sends out worm, gets caught.

- Norton sells a couple thousand copies of its Antivirus software when a new batch of people get fed up with they're pc's turning into poo. Stock goes up. Big fat check for Mr. Thompson!

Conspiracy.

http://news.morningstar.com/news/DJ/M04/D28/200404 281909DOWJONESDJONLINE001680.html - Worm Numbers Up = Cash Money Yo.

Article : "the only businesses that mutual funds are not allowed to hold shares in are mutual funds."

Somebody better tell that to Vanguard quick!

Umm, this looks like a buck a share to me.

Current MSFT Quote

Note the market cap of about 284 billion. Divided by the $26.50 share price comes up with about 10.7 billion outstanding shares.

If I were going to buy anyone, giving them more than a buck would be a good idea.

I mean this might be significant to a pension fund that owns a million shares of Microsoft, but they've lost far more than that over the last 3 years with the decline in share price. The individual investor is even less favorably inclined towards MSFT, since they lost money they could even less afford than a large fund.

Stock Financial Health Grade change
The Morningstar Financial Health Stock Grade has changed from B- to F. For details,
click here

Stock Profitability Grade change
The Morningstar Profitability Stock Grade has changed from Not Available to F. For details,
click here

Stock Growth Grade change
The Morningstar Growth Stock Grade has changed from A to A+. For details,
click here

I suspect this won't be a "growth stock" for very long.

Stock Financial Health Grade change
The Morningstar Financial Health Stock Grade has changed from B- to F. For details,
click here

Stock Profitability Grade change
The Morningstar Profitability Stock Grade has changed from Not Available to F. For details,
click here

Stock Growth Grade change
The Morningstar Growth Stock Grade has changed from A to A+. For details,
click here

I suspect this won't be a "growth stock" for very long.

Stock Financial Health Grade change
The Morningstar Financial Health Stock Grade has changed from B- to F. For details,
click here

Stock Profitability Grade change
The Morningstar Profitability Stock Grade has changed from Not Available to F. For details,
click here

Stock Growth Grade change
The Morningstar Growth Stock Grade has changed from A to A+. For details,
click here

I suspect this won't be a "growth stock" for very long.

Back in February, SCO (symbol: SCOX) was just over $1/share, which is was close to its 52-week low of $0.60/share. Amazingly, the stock has climbed to $6/share, despite the kamikaze lawsuit.

If you think about SCO's assets (what assets?), and the prospect for growth (with their customer relations?), you have to wonder how that valuation is justified. The only logical buyer would be Microsoft. Even if M$ buys SCO (which I doubt), they will do so at a fire sale price that reflects the classic M$ business practices.

To me, this looks like a good stock to sell short. When the investment industry learns what the IT industry already knows, I think SCO will crash & burn. If people are dumb enough to buy at $6/share, I say there are some fools out there who need to be separated from their money. The mere existance of short sellers would be the early warning that investors will use to liquidate their SCO stock.

I like the verdict and think that the fine is appropriate, but I don't like how it was calculated. Maybe the article misrepresented it, but charging $0.01 per spam seems excessive.

The article says 880 million undeliverable emails are sent every day. At a penny a piece, that's USD$8.8million / day, or $3.2 billion/year. The company does $42 billion in sales per year, I doubt that they spend 7.6% of their income on spam. Or, for that matter, give me $3b/yr and I'll provide the equipment to totally filter all of their undeliverable mail -- they'll save their shareholders $200 million!.

I just wish they said "it cost us 1 man-year of work to stop this guy" and cost it that way instead of making up numbers per message. It's this kind of unjustified damage estimate that "cost" sun $80 million of money that was good enough to tell a judge under oath, but too bogus to tell their shareholders. A doubt NTT has a $3.2b line-item on their annual report.

(and, as others have pointed out, this 880milMsg/day is misaddressed mail - trivial to filter out and it never consume any expensive RF bandwidth)

Fair enough. I agree with most of your comments. (I, too, am not in the recording industry, so I don't have an authoritative voice...) Some comments:

I'm not sure I buy into the idea that more and more CDs are being produced - for one thing, once the initial production is paid for, maintaining a catalog is essentially free.

Well, sales of CD-R and CD-RW devices indicate that there is an increase of CD recording devices in the homes of consumers. Also, the sales of blank CDs indicate that a lot of consumers have the need for the resources needed to record a CD (although, I suppose that some percentage of those CDs are going into data disks and art projects).

Anyhow, I would hope that you agree that there is an increase of CDs on the market in general. Now then, with the independent labels and the home consumer markets, I suspect that there are more CDs being produced. Within the recording industry, however, I suspect that you are correct... they have N number of CDs that they expect to sell each quarter/year, and that number is fairly consistent, according to some function (linear, compounding, exponential, I-don't-know).\

I also agree that there is a plethora of pre-produced bands. My thinking is that these types of bands are the kinds of bands which support the model I proposed of a healthy industry.

I also disagree rather strongly with your definition of a healthy industry - a total lockin like that is enormously UN-healthy. A healthy insdustry is one that consistently makes a profit, that's all. It doesn't have to keep growing, it doesn't have to continually make more money, all it has to do is consistently make money. If it's doing that, it's health, and the recording industry certainly is that.

Now then, I think I understand your position on this point. I would like to offer a comment and a scenario for your consideration.

Comment: I'm not necessarily suggesting a complete lock-in. What I'm suggesting is an economic moat... the thing that keeps your competitors away from you; which is what the recording industry lacks. Now, I couldn't find stock quotes or for the other companies, but I pulled up some graphs for Sony:

Sony 3yr Graph
Sony Moat

As you can see, poor Sony has been declining for three years now, and has no economic moat. There is nothing preventing anybody else from competing with Sony and taking market share away from them.

Scenario: OK, please consider the situation of a salesman who rents an apartment, has little in the way of savings, and experiences a heart attack or stroke. This person may be very consistent before the heart attack or stroke; he may even be increasing his productivity, sales, and yearly income. But when the stroke or heart attack occurs, it's all over. He doesn't have the economic moat to protect him from other salespeople who he is competing with.

Now then, if this salesman were, instead, a real-estate agent, things may be very different. A real-estate agent and real-estate holder typically owns real estate, collects rent from others, has savings, and has a wide economic moat, which is protected by federal law. If a real-estate agent suffers a heart attack or stroke, there are savings to recoup with, rent is still-collected, and annual income may not affected in any manner.

My suggestion is that a healthy industry is not locked in. Rather, the healthy industry has control of it's own castle on it's own real estate. Instead of being locked-in, it has the defenses to keep other's out.

Fair enough. I agree with most of your comments. (I, too, am not in the recording industry, so I don't have an authoritative voice...) Some comments:

I'm not sure I buy into the idea that more and more CDs are being produced - for one thing, once the initial production is paid for, maintaining a catalog is essentially free.

Well, sales of CD-R and CD-RW devices indicate that there is an increase of CD recording devices in the homes of consumers. Also, the sales of blank CDs indicate that a lot of consumers have the need for the resources needed to record a CD (although, I suppose that some percentage of those CDs are going into data disks and art projects).

Anyhow, I would hope that you agree that there is an increase of CDs on the market in general. Now then, with the independent labels and the home consumer markets, I suspect that there are more CDs being produced. Within the recording industry, however, I suspect that you are correct... they have N number of CDs that they expect to sell each quarter/year, and that number is fairly consistent, according to some function (linear, compounding, exponential, I-don't-know).\

I also agree that there is a plethora of pre-produced bands. My thinking is that these types of bands are the kinds of bands which support the model I proposed of a healthy industry.

I also disagree rather strongly with your definition of a healthy industry - a total lockin like that is enormously UN-healthy. A healthy insdustry is one that consistently makes a profit, that's all. It doesn't have to keep growing, it doesn't have to continually make more money, all it has to do is consistently make money. If it's doing that, it's health, and the recording industry certainly is that.

Now then, I think I understand your position on this point. I would like to offer a comment and a scenario for your consideration.

Comment: I'm not necessarily suggesting a complete lock-in. What I'm suggesting is an economic moat... the thing that keeps your competitors away from you; which is what the recording industry lacks. Now, I couldn't find stock quotes or for the other companies, but I pulled up some graphs for Sony:

Sony 3yr Graph
Sony Moat

As you can see, poor Sony has been declining for three years now, and has no economic moat. There is nothing preventing anybody else from competing with Sony and taking market share away from them.

Scenario: OK, please consider the situation of a salesman who rents an apartment, has little in the way of savings, and experiences a heart attack or stroke. This person may be very consistent before the heart attack or stroke; he may even be increasing his productivity, sales, and yearly income. But when the stroke or heart attack occurs, it's all over. He doesn't have the economic moat to protect him from other salespeople who he is competing with.

Now then, if this salesman were, instead, a real-estate agent, things may be very different. A real-estate agent and real-estate holder typically owns real estate, collects rent from others, has savings, and has a wide economic moat, which is protected by federal law. If a real-estate agent suffers a heart attack or stroke, there are savings to recoup with, rent is still-collected, and annual income may not affected in any manner.

My suggestion is that a healthy industry is not locked in. Rather, the healthy industry has control of it's own castle on it's own real estate. Instead of being locked-in, it has the defenses to keep other's out.

Not to mention the financial report that Apple releases every year. Please note that the total sales for 2001 were off by about 32.5% from 2000.

html might help (this so makes me look stoopid) Yeah, the profits are so good right now that the executives just sold off a huge stack of their personal >shares.

And to quote: During that period, Apple's stock was hovering around $24 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. On June 18, Apple warned that revenues for the quarter that began April 1 would be lower than expected. Shares are now trading around $17.

That must be due to the "billions" that is generated by Office for Mac. At $459.95 for the newest version of Office (v.X), you are implying that Apple sells over 4 million copies of Office, at full price, not for the updgrade.

1,000,000,000 / 459.95 = 2,174,149

Note: you did type "billions."

Well, with all these billions of dollars from office (not), and the sales of the iMac (slipping), iBook (also slipping), and the iPod (ok, but limited number of buyers available due to incompatability), this is what Apple has been doing for the past few years.

Not to mention the financial report that Apple releases every year. Please note that the total sales for 2001 were off by about 32.5% from 2000.

html might help (this so makes me look stoopid) Yeah, the profits are so good right now that the executives just sold off a huge stack of their personal >shares.

And to quote: During that period, Apple's stock was hovering around $24 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. On June 18, Apple warned that revenues for the quarter that began April 1 would be lower than expected. Shares are now trading around $17.

That must be due to the "billions" that is generated by Office for Mac. At $459.95 for the newest version of Office (v.X), you are implying that Apple sells over 4 million copies of Office, at full price, not for the updgrade.

1,000,000,000 / 459.95 = 2,174,149

Note: you did type "billions."

Well, with all these billions of dollars from office (not), and the sales of the iMac (slipping), iBook (also slipping), and the iPod (ok, but limited number of buyers available due to incompatability), this is what Apple has been doing for the past few years.

Not to mention the financial report that Apple releases every year. Please note that the total sales for 2001 were off by about 32.5% from 2000.

Yeah, the profits are so good right now that the executives just sold off a huge stack of their personal >shares.

And to quote: During that period, Apple's stock was hovering around $24 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. On June 18, Apple warned that revenues for the quarter that began April 1 would be lower than expected. Shares are now trading around $17.

That must be due to the "billions" that is generated by Office for Mac. At $459.95 for the newest version of Office (v.X), you are implying that Apple sells over 4 million copies of Office, at full price, not for the updgrade.

1,000,000,000 / 459.95 = 2,174,149

Note: you did type "billions."

Well, with all these billions of dollars from office (not), and the sales of the iMac (slipping), iBook (also slipping), and the iPod (ok, but limited number of buyers available due to incompatability), this is what Apple has been doing for the past few years.

Not to mention the financial report that Apple releases every year. Please note that the total sales for 2001 were off by about 32.5% from 2000.

Of course, I am a troll, and you're a zealot, so we know who is right.

Yeah, the profits are so good right now that the executives just sold off a huge stack of their personal >shares.

And to quote: During that period, Apple's stock was hovering around $24 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. On June 18, Apple warned that revenues for the quarter that began April 1 would be lower than expected. Shares are now trading around $17.

That must be due to the "billions" that is generated by Office for Mac. At $459.95 for the newest version of Office (v.X), you are implying that Apple sells over 4 million copies of Office, at full price, not for the updgrade.

1,000,000,000 / 459.95 = 2,174,149

Note: you did type "billions."

Well, with all these billions of dollars from office (not), and the sales of the iMac (slipping), iBook (also slipping), and the iPod (ok, but limited number of buyers available due to incompatability), this is what Apple has been doing for the past few years.

Not to mention the financial report that Apple releases every year. Please note that the total sales for 2001 were off by about 32.5% from 2000.

Of course, I am a troll, and you're a zealot, so we know who is right.

What is my advice - work with a financial planner.

Seems simple, yes? Consider this - when your health is at risk, most people go to a doctor. Why isn't your financial health just as important?

During most of the 90's, you could throw darts and make obscene returns. Welcome to the current market, where the market moves in odd ways. It's harder to invest successfully in this market.

I do not advocate that Joe Average stay out of the market. Approached intelligently, the stock market is an excellent way to develop a solid plan for the future - large purchases, kids, retirement, etc.

My investment tool of choice is not a stock, but a mutual fund. I research the various funds, including their long-term history, markets they invest in and the history of the mutual fund family (VERY important!). I also look at the managers of the mutual fund - are they new? Where did they come from, etc. Here is an excellent resource for that. There are other sites as well.

I really like the mutual fund as an investment tool. They are managed by professionals who are capable of performing the research needed, and can respond quickly to market movement. Mutual funds also help to spread some risk out by investing in a variety of companies. This doesn't always help if an entire sector collapses, but it can mitigate losses.

Another option is to get a good stockbroker who will recommend stocks to you. Even there, a good rule of thumb is to stick with stocks you know something about - even if you just know what the company does. You can get into trouble investing in companies you've never heard of. At the very least, know the companies industry and have a rough idea of how well that industry is doing.

The best thing Joe Average can do is invest now. Immediately. Even if it's just a bit - it adds up. Try this - take two people. Adam invests $2,000 a year for seven years. He spends the next 25 years or so spending that money. Bob does the opposite - spends 2K a year for seven years, then saves it for 25 years. Assume a 10% interest rate - see how much they each have at the end. Pretty interesting.

Investing is complicated - establish a good working relationship with a professional and let him help you. Find someone that YOU feel comfortable dealing with. Trust your gut. Make sure you understand what they are saying, make the broker explain things to you. Ask why he likes certain investments, and not others. Make him answer the tough questions - a good broker will take the time to explain things to you.

I'm biased, but you are in the St. Louis area - try this company. Yeah - it's my dad's firm - I'm biased, remember?

Convenient that you link shows just the past two years. This is what shareholders REALLY think of Microsoft. Notice that even in this recession, you'd be up over 600% just in the last 5 years. You'd be up several thousand percent if you stretched it back further than that chart shows.